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An airstrike killed dozens of people Monday at a camp for displaced people in northern Yemen, in what appeared to be the single deadliest attack since a Saudi ­Arabia-led coalition sent warplanes to target Shiite insurgents advancing across the country. Read more »

A judge presides over a trial. The defendant complains about his bias, but the judge does not recuse himself. He runs the trial, and at its end he writes his verdict and decides on the sentence. Then, because he does not want his own biases to become a matter of controversy again, he decides to step aside at the last minute so that another judge can read out what he has written. Same trial, same verdict, same sentence, different voice. Read more »

Business as usual is nicely defined as “Persistence in the ordinary course of events despite difficulties, morality, and other hindrances.”

This month the Department of State published its “Framework for Cooperation Between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and the Government of the United States of America for 2015.” Near the top it states that: Read more »

The war in Gaza has brought UNRWA, the UN agency dealing with Palestinian “refugees,” back into the news– mostly because UNRWA schools were used to shoot rockets at Israel.

The failings of UNRWA were examined here (“Ending UNRWA and Advancing Peace“) in December, 2011, although today they seem even worse. The UNRWA employees union is under Hamas control, and it’s clear that the staff is riddled with Hamas “activists.” The Israeli commentator and former Knesset member Einat Wilf wrote yesterday thatRead more »

Despite the criticism of the UN’s Goldstone Report, including by Goldstone himself, the UN seems determined to do it again.

Goldstone investigated “Operation Cast Lead,” the war between Israel and Hamas in December 2008 and January 2009, or more precisely he ignored Hamas and investigated Israel. Now the UN Human Rights Council has appointed a commission to investigate the current conflict, and once again Israel alone is to be the target. There will be no investigation of the rocket and mortars fired at Israel by Hamas, nothing about the purpose of the terror tunnels dug by Hamas into Israel, nothing about human shields, nothing even about Hamas’s use of UN facilities as storage sites and launching pads. Read more »

The Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories of the United Nations Human Rights Council is an extremist named Richard Falk. Falk is an embarrassment to the Council and the UN whose only activity is to use violent and extreme language in denouncing Israel–most recently for “a criminal intention that is genocidal.” Read more »

Just over a week ago the UN General Assembly voted to call 2014 the ”International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” The vote was 100 for to 7 against, with 56 abstentions. This is a standard outcome in the General Assembly where Israel is concerned. The General Assembly passed an additional five resolutions about Israel, maintaining its obsessive, ridiculous, and indefensible record of attacking the Jewish State. Read more »

There are over 500,000 Palestinian “refugees” in Syria, as counted by the UN agency handling Palestinian “refugees,” the UN Relief and Works Agency or UNRWA. The quotation marks are especially apt in this case, for the great majority of the “refugees” were born in Syria and have lived there all their lives. Only under UNRWA’s definitions of “refugee” (Palestinians who left what is now Israel in 1948, and all of their descendants until the end of time) would they qualify. Read more »

Next week, on November 12, new members of the UN Human Rights Council will be elected. Among the candidates are nations that should never be allowed on the Council, and indeed whose presence will make the Council a mockery: Cuba, Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and Vietnam. Read more »